The Disinformation Age: a contest of liars?

Ah, Bea,

What specifically has Bush, or any of his senior officials lied about? They aren't always entirely forthcoming, they avoid answering some questions, and they generalize somewhat more than I'd like. However, none of that is lying. There is no evidence that the administration, or its spokesmen, have knowingly given false facts to the media.

Ah, the sins of omission that lead to war
Asherman, you might want to read my post re "Invading Iraq not a new idea for the Bush clique" for starters. I don't recall any presidential compaign comments by the Bushies of their intent to start a war in Iraq. The people Bush surrounded himself with began their planning of an Iraqi war as early as 1997 and concealed that plan from the American people during the presidential campaign.

One of the saddest examples of lying was the embarassment of Colin Powell, a decent and honest man, at being given false or misleading (refuted afterwards) information to present to the U.N. Who cooked the evidence books? The CIA, FBI, or the Bush Administration.

Bush has betrayed every campaign promise he made regarding domestic and foreign policy---except for seeking excessive tax refunds to his wealthy constituents and social peers.

Bee,

Not to mention a continguency plan during a hottly contested Presidential campaign is not lying. Campaign promises are rarely kept, and everyone knows they are intended only to indicate the candidate's probable intention. Again, campaign promises aren't lies.

I know that a lot of people seem to believe that Colin Powell lied, stretched the truth and even cribbed from a grad students paper when he spoke before the UN. Mr. Powell may have been mistaken, but I don't believe he lied. He certainly made as strong a case as he was able given the classified materials available to him. To choose words that support you case, sometimes is mistaken to mean something other than what was intended. I really don't quite know what to think about cribbing from a grad student. It sounds wrong. Why would the Secretary of State, a bright man with a sterling reputation and no need to crib, steal the work of a grad student? As Secretary of State, Mr. Powell has access to some of the best minds and his talk had to be carefully crafted. It just seems unreasonable that Powell is guilty of plagerism.

A lie is to knowingly present a mistatement as a fact with the intent to deceive. All politicians "lie" occasionally, and that's expected. Clinton looked the American People in the eye, and lied. He sat in a courtroom under oath, and he lied. I haven't seen anything from Bush, or his administration, can be characterized as a lie.

Hows the puppy doing? Are you going to come over for dinner soon?

examples of Bush et al lies from BumbleBeeBoogie
Many of the links I'm including can be found by simply entering "Bush" and
"lies" into the Yahoo or Google Search engine.

There a number of definitions of this usage of lie. Here is a short
representative few found on Dictionary.com.

1. A false statement deliberately presented as being true; a falsehood.

2. Something meant to deceive or give a wrong impression.

3. To utter falsehood with an intention to deceive; to say or do that which is intended to deceive another, when he a right to know the truth, or when morality requires a just representation.

4. A falsehood uttered or acted for the purpose of deception; an intentional violation of truth; an untruth spoken with the intention to deceive

5. A man may state what is untrue from ignorance or misconception; hence, to impute an untruth to one is not necessarily the same as charging him with a lie. Every lie is an untruth, but not every untruth is a lie.

6. A statement that deviates from or perverts the truth.

I could not find a recognized legal definition of "lie", but that does not
mean that there is not one out there.

The first definition is the most straight forward, the one used by Asherman - lets call this a "strict lie" for now.

The preceeding definitions add nuances such as "[to]give the wrong impression", "when morality requires a just representation", "a falsehood uttered OR ACTED for the purpose of deception", and "a statement that deviates from or perverts the truth" - let us call these "nuanced lies".

There are several examples of Bush, his administration and senior officials of his administration making lies that clearly conform to the first definition. There are, however, a great many more examples of nuanced lies presented by the Bush presidency, though it would be difficult and time consuming to sort them one from the other.

Thankfully, there are a number of internet resouces that have alread made an extensive catalogue of various untrue statements. Although they do not separate the lies according to strictness/nuance, I think the thoughtful reader should be able to parse it out.

Following are a list of links that catalogue only the lies that conform to that first, strict definition:

1. First up, this is a very partisan, not very detached catalogue, though
it is exhaustive. Many of it's instances do not fall under the strictest
definition. Many examples aren't lies at all, merely contradictions of
previous statements.

http://www.bushwatch.com/bushlies.htm

"An Iraq war has absolutely nothing to do with oil." - a statement no
serious person considers true, and Donald Rumsfield is most certainly
serious. It is a false statement and the person most definately knew it to
be so. This is a strict lie. (You can argue whether or not this war is
primarily or only partially to do with oil, but there is no way that this
war has absolutely NOTHING to do with it.)

2. Here is today's Conason who suggests that Bush may have made a strict lie just last night:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2003/03/07/bush/index.html

"He has trained and financed al-Qaida-type organizations before, al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations." That latter charge, although somewhat garbled, sounded new to me. Has Saddam trained and financed al-qaida ? or "al-Qaida type organizations," whatever that may mean."

Not according to the State Department's most recent annual report on international terrorism, which was issued last year"

Can we be certain that this is a strict lie? No, though it's entirely possible. But we can understandably assume (correctly or not) that the writers of Bush's carefully composed speech have been fully aware of salient facts derived within recent history by their own State Department. This is no doubt a lie of some kind, whether it is strict or nuanced is another debate. Did Bush know of the State Dept report? Is he simply disregard it? Does he know of additional evidence to support his claim? If there is other evidence, isn't it high time he presented it to an increasingly doubting world in some form? If he isn't aware of report, isn't that alarming that our head of state is unaware of important findings on matters of immediate concern? Why isn't he aware of the report? Has it been kept from him? Has he intentially avoided it? Is his schedule so busy that it is glossed over by a crowd of other items?

3. Here's the recent refutation of the Niger nuclear issue:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=578&ncid=578&e=6&u=/nm/20030307/ts_nm/iraq_un_elbaradei_dc

4. Here are a few terrific tables by the Democratic arm of the House Appropriations Committee:

http://www.house.gov/appropriations_democrats/bushdhs.pdf

http://www.house.gov/appropriations_democrats/caughtonfilm.htm

http://www.house.gov/appropriations_democrats/stateoftheunionpost2.htm

http://www.house.gov/appropriations_democrats/stateoftheunionhtml.htm

http://www.house.gov/appropriations_democrats/stateoftheunionhtml.htm

5. And finally, here's Wage Slave's terrific Score card of Evil. Sure, the title and focus is extremely partisan - but nonetheless true. Most of the "evils" recounted are not lies, but many are.

http://www.wage-slave.org/scorecard.html

6. Then add:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-605441,00.html